The Penguin Book of Witches

New Atlantic Indie bestseller

Haunting . . . Erudite, insightful, and resonant . . .

Katherine Howe s new book recalls a time when witchcraft wasn t just a crime, it was enough to get you killed. NPR s Weekend Edition Sunday

A fascinating selection of historical accounts. The Washington Post

People have never been as interested to hear about a book I was reading as they were when I spent a few weeks in October carrying around The Penguin Book of Witches. . . . Ben Franklin was alive and you could still be publicly stoned to death in Philly for being a witch. Crazy. This book is a good gift to give to single women you know. Caity Weaver, Gawker, The Best Things We Read in 2014

I am just glad there is now, in this world, a book with the title The Penguin Book of Witches, because, really, how cool is that. John Scalzi, New York Times bestselling and Hugo Award winning author

Invaluable . . . A fine compendium. The Independent

An excellent read . . . Fascinating and completely different from [other] books on witchcraft . . . A sobering look at what fear and instability can do to communities through the demonization of anyone thought of as different. You will close the book with a broader understanding of what we are capable of doing to each other. Nerdist

A cornucopia of fascinating and often unsettling texts . . . Deftly curated and exhaustively annotated . . . [Along with] Howe s engaging, thorough, and thoughtful annotations . . . the excerpts . . . are fascinating windows into early ideas about gender, class, and social roles. Refinery 29

Fascinating and insightful. With her usual skill, Katherine Howe navigates the winding path leading to Salem s hysteria and beyond. A must-read for anyone who wants to know not only what happened but also how and why. Brunonia Barry, New York Times bestselling author of The Lace Reader

This comprehensive collection of carefully selected documents and published primary materials, coupled with judicious and informative introductions, will help modern readers understand the seemingly inexplicable and persistent popular phenomenon of belief in witchcraft from the seventeenth century into more modern times. Mary Beth Norton, author of In the Devil s Snare

An informative and engaging series of texts that Katherine Howe introduces in a crisp and well-informed manner. The chronological breadth is unusual, but it allows us to grasp more fully the continuities that mark the history of witch-hunting on both sides of the Atlantic. David D. Hall, Harvard Divinity School

With insightful notations . . . this superbly edited and annotated work provides in-depth material for those interested in the origins of witchcraft persecution in America. Library Journal